Do you know how much your 0845 number is costing you?

The hidden cost of 0845 numbers – Are you making your customers look elsewhere?

Having just completed a wide ranging analysis on a couple of big landline telecoms projects for a few of our Clients recently, there’s been something of a trend appearing in relation to the dialling habits of both customers and staff which, given the savings we have identified for them, seems worth highlighting.

0845 numbers were a big hit in the 90’s and early 2000’s. They enabled businesses to give themselves a non-geographic presence and to get hold of some great inbound call statistics on who was calling them, from where and in response to what (i.e. advertising campaign tracking). It also meant that customers could call them from anywhere in the UK and pay only for a ‘local rate call’*. This was a boon for customers and businesses and it worked well… For a time.

Things have moved a lot since the mid 2000’s, however, and the virtual omnipresence of mobile phones is very important here.  There is good anecdotal evidence that people are now far less likely to call an 0845 number (or even an 0800 number) from a mobile phone as these sorts of calls are not usually included in their call bundle, meaning higher costs to them. This obviously leads to customers (both potential and existing) putting off calling businesses from their mobile phones… And we all know what happens to something once we tell ourselves “I’ll do that later…”… Later never comes…

In addition to this worrying situation, businesses that use 0845’s will tend to find their own staff dialling the 0845 number themselves. It stands to reason, as they will repeat the number to customers many, many times a day, so when they need to call a colleague, they dial the number they know. This takes them ‘out of the network’ and therefore creates a chargeable call, whereas the underlying ‘01/02’ number would typically have come out of your prepaid minutes bundle, so creating no additional cost at all.

All of this, combined with the fact that inbound calling statistics are now available for ‘01/02’ number and the ability of businesses to use virtual, non-geographical ‘01/02’ numbers has, in this writers opinion, made 0845’s obsolete.

If you are still using 0845’s, perhaps you might want to give us a call… The number is 0113 385 4693.

Lee Freeman is an Overhead Management Specialist at Auditel Leeds and thinks there is a better way to use Non-Geographic Numbers.

* – The Advertising Standards Authority actually forbids calling the prices for ‘084’ and ‘087’ numbers as equivalent to “local rate”, “lo-call” or “national rate” as these terms ceased to have any meaning in the UK in 2004.

How do you get free mobile phone calls?

There have been a few announcements recently that have just served to strengthen the general trend towards “free”(see later for an explanation of ‘free’) mobile communication we’ve all been seeing over the last few years. The likes of ‘whatsapp’ and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) have taken a huge dent out of the text messaging numbers (and therefore revenues) mobile providers receive. In addition, the release of BBM 7.0 saw them introduce ‘Voice Call’ over the BBM platform and BlackBerry have now announced, (via CEO  Thorsten Heins so one can assume it’s not another hoax) that they are going to finally open up to other handsets and will be available on iOS and Android from Summer 2013. Whilst the BBM offering is likely to be more reliable, offer a wider scope of services, options and possibilities than the others, by far the most significant announcement in this sphere is the recent announcement of ‘FaceTime Audio’, effectively, a VoIP system.

The near ubiquitous iPhone (therefore iOS) will be, regardless of all of the above points, the thing that decides whether ‘we’ (the people) are ready to move to a new way of making calls… There is a lot up in the air at the moment (iOS7 won’t even launch until Sept 2013) and there is no guarantee that it will work on 3G/4G/EDGE (FaceTime video does, so it’s a reasonable assumption).  There are also always going to be coverage issues (outside of WiFi of course), but this could effectively mean ‘free’ calls between people who ‘know’ each other (have some form of digital connection, at least) are about to become a reality from anywhere to anywhere else… And, as a few people are noticing, it’s really not being discussed.  Apple (and the industry in general) seem to finally be making moves into the end game of severing their reliance/dependence on networks and this is going to be big news for businesses as well as the general public. International Call costs, Gone.  Non-Inter Fleet Call costs, Gone.  The list of possibilities for savings and efficiencies is long.

However the word “free” is bandied about a lot and free isn’t really free.  As always, it really just means a different way of paying.  So in this case a traditional mobile voice call over the airwaves becomes a call using data.  Now how you pay for that data is another matter, there are essentially 5 ways under current revenue models:

1)       A data bolt-on e.g. £5 a month for 1Gb

2)       PAYG e.g. £1 per MB

3)       Home/Business Wi-Fi – so you (or your employer) pays your broadband provider a monthly fee

4)       Public Wi-Fi – usually payment is in kind i.e. purchase of a coffee

5)       Wi-Fi Hotspots e.g. BT provides ‘free’ hotspots to those purchasing home broadband.

So, on corporate fleets you can’t expect all users to understand the cost of every call and to make the choice between Wi-Fi, Data Carried Calls or Voice Calls. The sensible and logical choice for businesses is to analyse the historic usage and then procure the right bundles for your corporate fleet that fits the actual ‘real world’ usage profile of the users.

 

 

Lee Freeman is an Overhead Management Specialist at Auditel Leeds and likes well thought out procurement strategies.